PHILIPPE Clement says it is important Rangers are faced with tough challenges in pre-season as he prepares his squad to take on Manchester United tomorrow afternoon.
The Light Blues head to Murrayfield for an exciting friendly against the English Premier League giants before also facing Birmingham City and Union Berlin in the coming days.
Clement says the friendly programme was carefully chosen to test his squad ahead of the start of the Scottish Premiership season in just over two weeks.
In an exclusive interview with RangersTV, the manager said: “I have chosen a lot of difficult games, I didn't want to have a preparation where we were the kings of the preparation and then you get surprised when you play the first league games.
“They all had to be all really big tests at the right moments and that is the way to grow. If you make mistakes against these kinds of opponents you pay, but we can learn from that to not make these mistakes moving forward. It is so important to have really good games, strong games, where the team is challenged in every sense.
“Week by week we need to grow. We need to become better. It has been the case that the Standard game was better than the Hamilton game and the Ajax game was better than the Standard game and I want us to make the next step in that way.
“It is also necessary of course against a team with the quality of Man United although they will not be with the full squad but with a lot of young talents who can maybe be the stars of the future.
“It is going to be a really interesting test and I am always excited to see what the team can show at that level now. Physically, I know where they are, they are not there yet where we need to be in August but that is normal, we are still in the fourth week, and it is about tactically doing the right things also.”
Clement provided an injury update on his squad, as he revealed Nico Raskin will miss the next five to six weeks with an ankle injury sustained in the Ajax friendly.
He also said it will be important to use the three friendlies this week, as well a B Team fixture, to ensure minutes for the whole squad.
On Raskin, he explained: “I expected it to be worse if I saw him straight after the game but still it is a really bad injury, bad timing also because we are going to miss him in the beginning of the season that is clear.
“James Tavernier is getting better, he is close to training with the team, and Todd [Cantwell] is training with the team but is not ready to play with the first team so he will play with the second team on Saturday.
“For Hamza [Igamane] It is a massive change of culture, the life here, the way of training, the way of working, and the language also so we have an interpreter here to translate for him. He is behind the others for the moment, and we are working with him individually to make him stronger before we put him in the collective training.
“We are going to go into a massive month of August and September, October, November with a lot of games so we need to make the whole squad ready for that and make sure that they have enough playing minutes in their legs. That is the physical part but that is also of course the tactical and technical part. We need to use these games also to do the right things together.”